The Last Resort(32)
‘Well,’ Tiggy says, draining her drink, ‘I wonder how long we’ll be allowed to enjoy this place before the next part of the game?’
Summer 2000
She stops running when she reaches the bay. Her lungs and her leg muscles burn, and she has to put a hand on the wall of the shop to stop herself from collapsing. After a few moments, her breath starts to return to normal. But her face still feels hot and her heart is still thumping too hard.
She’s meant to be back for dinner soon. But how is she going to eat after what she’s just done? She steps away from the wall and walks around to the door of the shop. She knows what to do. She was told the first time she came here without her parents that if there was ever a problem of any kind, she was to go to the shop and they would help her.
The shop door is open, stands filled with buckets and spades lining the route inside. She takes a few tentative steps, spots the nice lady behind the counter who always adds an extra piece of fudge or an extra couple of Fruit Salad chews when she goes in for a mixed bag. The lady has a kind face. The lady will help.
She’s almost at the counter when a man knocks into her as he passes. ‘Get out of the way, girl,’ he says, angrily pushing a bag of bread rolls across the counter.
She stands behind him, shaking. She doesn’t like this man. Something about him gives her a bad feeling. She doesn’t wait for him to turn round. She just walks out of the shop. Outside, she smacks right into a pale, skinny boy and he springs back from her, a terrified look on his face.
‘Sorry . . .’ she mutters, wondering for a moment why he looks so spooked, but not caring enough to stop and find out.
She walks quickly back to her grandparents’ cottage, bursts in the door, hot-faced and sweating, and says, ‘Please, I’m too homesick. I don’t want to stay here for another week. I feel sick. I want my mum. Please, can I go back home?’
Brenda
Brenda tries to get comfortable on one of the sunloungers, but it’s either too upright or too flat, and every time she swings her legs over the side to twist around and adjust it, a shooting pain travels up her thigh. She makes one final attempt to get the lounger to stay where she wants it, then, realising it’s the best she can do without drawing attention to herself, she swings her legs back one final time and picks up her drink.
She’s already on her second glass. It doesn’t taste too strong – in fact, there’s maybe a little too much soda for her liking – but she can already feel it going to her head. If she was at home, she’d probably stop now, but after the day she’s had, and being stuck here with these strangers, she decides that another glass or two won’t do any harm. Besides, it’s taking her mind off her leg.
She doesn’t think the snake properly bit her. It didn’t really feel like a bite, as such. More like being stung by nettles, or the sharp scratch of a needle inserted in a vein to take blood. Do snakes even have teeth? She doesn’t have time to watch wildlife programmes. How is she supposed to know how snakebites work? James had been extremely concerned when he’d asked if she’d been bitten, and for reasons she can’t quite fathom now, she’d decided to lie.
Maybe it was just a drama she didn’t want to be part of. Or maybe she’s trying to convince herself that it didn’t really happen.
She makes sure that the others are fully distracted before rolling up the leg of her shorts and taking a look. There’s a swollen red bump that itches a little, and only seems to hurt when she moves her leg or touches it.
She rolls her shorts back down and takes another sip of her drink.
Best not to touch it then, she decides. Anyway – it’s not as if it can be that bad, can it? They can’t have put a potentially deadly snake in a place where she was sure to disturb it – that would be absurd. They invited her here to ask for her advice, and to offer her potential investment. She’s hardly going to be interested if she ends up hospitalised.
She leans back into the lounger. James and Amelia are inspecting the sports equipment that’s been left for them all. Lucy is rattling a cocktail shaker, leaning forwards and laughing at something Scott is saying to her at the bar. Brenda doesn’t know what to make of her yet, but then she hasn’t really spent much time talking to her. She’d helped Scott all the way down to the bay and Brenda had been more concerned with her own footing to pay much attention to what they were saying. Tiggy had walked with her, holding her elbow as if she were an old woman. She is an old woman to Tiggy though, isn’t she? Sometimes she forgets what it’s like to be so young and invincible. Tiggy had rabbited on the whole way, chattering about what a pig Giles is, but how he’s such a genius and it’s not surprising that he needs so many people around him – to stimulate his mind. She’d tried to explain her Instagram life, and how it made her money, and what she could do to help Brenda grow her ‘online presence’. Brenda hadn’t been able to get a word in to tell the girl that her business doesn’t work like that. That discretion is the key to her investments, not shiny pictures of king-size beds with vases of artfully arranged flowers by the side and luxury robes laid out at the bottom, with pretty cotton slippers on the thick carpet. Towels fashioned into swans and hearts. Ice bucket on the bedside cabinet with a bottle of expensive champagne draped in a starched linen napkin.